Cara Harvey (00:00.066)

Welcome toA Purpose Driven  Mom Show, episode 527. Today you get a nice little sneak peek into my program On Purpose You. You can head over to apurposedrivenmom.com/onpurposeyou to join this membership. It’s only $27 and it is a curated library for you to help you figure out how to get more clarity, alignment, and momentum in your life. Once a month, as a bonus, right now, I am doing office hours because this program doesn’t have a community. One of the things that I like to do is get on with my students. I answer their questions. And so we took a couple questions that kind of overlapped, and they were about what do you do when you get overwhelmed.

What do you do when it all feels like too much? What do you do when you’re not feeling well or you have a chronic illness or the baby’s not sleeping? And how do you cope with that? I’m answering those questions today. So what you’re gonna get is an informal chat of me answering those questions from those members where I am talking about all those things. You can check out the show notes at a purposedrivenmom.com/slash podcast five twenty-seven. Head on over. And if you wanna check out on purpose you, the link is over in the show notes. All right, question one, Denise’s question.

What do you do in life? There’s your curveballs and your goals drastically change mid-season. Now I know a little bit about Denise’s situations, but I will answer the question in general. The curveball thing is really hard, I think, for a lot of us in particular. A lot of us who really like things to be structured a certain type of way, who really like to have like control over what’s gonna happen. But we know that’s not reality, right? Like we know.

That life will continue to throw us curveballs over and over and over again. So, how do we deal with them? There’s two strategies I’m gonna give. And this question in particular is kind of like a school of clarity type of question, because I think it comes from a place of proactivity and reactivity. There’s a couple of things you can do to prepare yourself for curveballs in the only way you can, right? Like you don’t know everything that’s gonna happen. You don’t know the next steps. You don’t know what that’s gonna look like, but there are a couple of things you can do to set yourself up for success.

And there are a couple things you can do reactively, like in the moment. So proactively, we don’t know the curveballs we’re gonna hit. But what we do know is how we tend to react to curveballs. So if you know you are someone who stresses out very easily if your schedule gets changed, if you know you are someone who actually like

Cara Harvey (02:16.054)

When stuff moves around, you’re like, I’m in, game on. Like you get really focused and like hyper on top of things. You like that urgency, that, crud, I need to do this by the end of the day feeling, right? You can adapt and create plans for yourself around that. So what I suggest you do is a few things. Again, this is proactive. We’ll talk reactive in a minute. But before life throws you the curveballs, we’re sitting here in the fall. Ask yourself, what are the potential obstacles that I could hit? Right? Kid gets sick.

If you I you know, I coach a lot of moms who have like chronic illnesses and stuff. And this is one of the things that I help them through is thinking like I could have a bad day, I know that I could not feel well. What does that feel like for me? Thinking it through in advance. If you also might know what are your typical types of curveballs. So if you are a caregiver and you have a ton of things you have to do, if something happens to one of your parents and you’re like, all right, I need to drop everything and now carve out space and time.

In order to make phone calls and get them to appointments, right? If you have a newborn and you know that your curveball might be I don’t get a full night’s sleep because I’m my kid isn’t sleeping through the night. What I want you to do first is I want you to think through what are the common curveballs, what are the common obstacles, what are the things that are most likely to throw me off track. Not that we’re expecting it, not that we’re in this Debbie Down or my gosh, everything’s terrible type of mode. This is the reality of being a proactive planner. If you can

Get decisions off your plate before you need to make decisions. Then when you have to make decisions in the moment, your nervous system will be better equipped to make the decision because you’re not also trying to figure out what do I do with X, Y, Z, right? So make a list of all the things that could potentially throw you off. Step one. Then come up with alternate solutions. I don’t know if anyone else used to read these books as a kid, the choose your own adventure books. I used to love these ones where like you get to the chapter and it’s like, you know, do you go through door number one or

Run into the woods, like go to page four, go to page 10. You guys know those books are like I loved them. Because you can be in control of a couple things. What if you did the same thing for your common obstacles? What if you’re like, hey, I know that a curveball for me is here’s my reality, right? I work from home, my kids are back at school today, first day school. So it’s quiet. I depend a lot of my work time and my schedule based on the fact that my kids are in traditional schooling. So a curveball for me is if one of my kids is sick in their home.

Cara Harvey (04:42.712)

So I know that that is going to happen at some point where one of my children will be homesick. So I can go through and I can make up a few scenarios and ask myself, how am I going to react or respond? Is it that I’m going to maybe make a list of the things I can do with my kids home? Maybe instead, maybe I was gonna have a recording day like today, like I mentioned at the beginning, I’m recording your morning and evening routine elective today. So what if that was my plan and my kid was homesick?

And my kid, you know, like they’re throwing up. I can’t be recording all the day. I have to be like ready to go if they need to run to the bathroom, things like that. Okay. Option A. I’m gonna go and make a list of the things I can do when they are home. Instead of doing a recording day, can I do an admin day? Where we’re snuggling on the couch watching a movie. I’ve got my computer and I can move it off my lap if they need to cuddle. Okay. I can prepare for those types of things.

Is it that maybe I have someone, my, you know, my mother-in-law, maybe my husband can so my husband can work from home some days. So maybe it’s one of those where I maybe I couldn’t change my schedule. Maybe I’m like, this is what I had to do today. What’s my backup plan? So I want you to come up with kind of like threads of backup plans for your most common obstacles, your most common curveballs, so that when they do hit you, you don’t have to think of the plan. You just have to think of the reactive parts that we’ll talk about in a second. So that’s step one.

Then and and with that caveat, we know you can’t predict stuff. I was in a really bad car accident in July. I didn’t know that was gonna happen. I didn’t make a backup plan for that. I didn’t, I don’t have a plan for the fact that like I’m in pain a lot of times and what I’m gonna do and I lost my computer, so I have to get a new computer. Like, I didn’t make those plans because those things happen too. But if you can at least control the controllable, if you can at least say to yourself, I know XYZ are things that I tend to deal with.

What do I do? Right. Like I mentioned, I I bring up Ellen a lot. She’s one of my students that I’ve worked with one-on-one coaching with I worked with her for years. But Ellen struggles with migraines. So we’ve made plan after plan for her of like, what do I do on a migraine day? What do I do the day after I have a migraine? Like I know it’s gonna happen. I just don’t know when. And I think when we can release the control over I don’t know when something’s gonna happen. So like I don’t make a plan versus I know what could happen. I just don’t know when. Our anxiety can calm down, our nervous system can calm down, and we can have that plan that we can pull up.

Cara Harvey (07:02.262)

Now, that being said, plans never go the way we want them to go. Wouldn’t that be nice, right? Like it just doesn’t always happen that way. So what do you do in the moment? What do you do? Again, I was in a car accident. I expect to be in a car accident. My schedule is very different. I gotta make phone calls. I’m deal, you know, like there’s so many things I have to handle, deal with, et cetera. So I think there’s a couple of things you can do in the moment when the obstacles come your way. Right. I was very fortunate that I wasn’t severely injured in my accident, but what if I was? And what if

I had physical goals on my plate, right? I was like, I’m gonna run a half marathon. And that was my plan. And then I got injured and I couldn’t do it. What do you do that? So when the obstacles come up that you don’t plan for and you’re in the moment, you have a couple choices here in order to get clarity about what your next steps are. First up, you’re gonna ask yourself situationally, is this goal, habit, routine, insert word here still something that is seasonally appropriate for me? Is it still something that I would like to do?

And does it make sense for the season that I’m in? If the answer is yes, then we can choose our own adventure that way. And if the answer is no, then we’re gonna choose our own adventure in the other direction. All right. So say you’re like, yes, this is still a seasonally appropriate goal. It’s still important to me, it’s still something I want to do, et cetera. Then the question becomes, what is in my control? We have we have lessons on this on the good, better, best model, right? Asking myself, what could this goal look like if it looks differently?

And I think that’s a place a lot of us get stuck when it comes to clarity is we feel like because we thought a goal was supposed to look one way, and now in the reality it doesn’t look that way, then we’re failing at that goal, that we’re not doing the right thing, et cetera. But instead, what if you ask yourself, like, hey, this goal is still seasonally appropriate? I still want to work on it, it still makes sense for me. What could it look like? What’s the good, what’s the better, and what’s the best? I think those things are important.

Now, if you get to the place and you’re like, hey, yes, I’ve made these goals. I know what I want it to look like, but unfortunately, like it isn’t the right time for me to work on something. The question isn’t.

Cara Harvey (09:08.426)

how I get it off my list. The question is, does it go somewhere else? So in this example that I’m using of like a physical goal, right? Something that you physically like cannot do. The question is like, if it’s still important to you, if it’s still seasonal, like what’s the clarity of where it goes? So maybe it’s like, I know that I am gonna be unable to train. I’m not gonna be able to do those things. unfortunately this is the best time to do it because then I’m gonna hit winter, blah, blah, blah. So maybe it’s like, all right, you know what? Right now, I have to accept

And that’s the hard part, right? Like I have to accept that, you know, like maybe I can’t ha do this right now, but next spring I want to try it again because it is still important to me. So long answer to that short question of what do I do when life serves me curveballs? You have choices and options. If you can sit and get ahead of them as best as possible, because we do not know and cannot predict the future, then when it comes to it, you won’t be having to figure out the plan and what to do. It’s just

All right, so here’s my plan. Here’s my curveball, and I’m gonna move from that. So feel free to ask any clarifying questions on that in the chat. I’m gonna go to our next question that was submitted for today. Jamie’s, hey Jamie. Well, let me know, Jamie, if you want to coach through. I can give you an answer, or if you want to unmute and we can talk as well. I’m chuckling a little because your question really ties into Denise’s question, you know, that she gave as well of like life just throws curveballs. So I’ll talk through it, but if at any point, Jamie, you want to just talk through and get and coach, we can do too.

but yes, exhausted, overwhelmed, chronic pain, right? Everything is suffering, it feels like. Where do I begin to start? Or how do I like focus in back with routines, with OPY, with like all of it, because everything seems like it needs attention. And this is one of those things too, where we’re coming out of a curveball season, and maybe your curveball season is long. If you’re dealing with chronic illness, if you’re dealing with health issues, if you’re dealing with family issues, we’ve talked about caregiving. That’s been a big topic.

On a lot of our coaching calls in my other program lately is caregiving for your own parents, right? Like if you’re in these long seasons where things have kind of just really completely thrown you off, and you’re like, I don’t even know where to get started because everything feels so important. I’m gonna give you some questions to ask yourself to kind of self-direct, especially when things are feeling very off.

Cara Harvey (11:33.154)

And you don’t know where to start, your brain automatically starts to ping pong. Like, I need to fix this and this and this and this. All right. So, my first recommendation for this is actually starting with a physical space. There is something mentally for us about the outer order in our homes that if it is like all over the place, we feel extra anxious, extra behind. But there is so much power in a quick pickup.

This was me literally this weekend. I was having a moment. It’s been summer. We were getting ready for back to school. And I was like, there’s just stuff everywhere. Like I am like dishes like this and laundry like this. And I was like, I don’t even know where to start. But I knew that part of feeling overwhelmed. And and here’s the thing. Fact. I am overwhelmed, right? But also the question I asked myself a lot is do I have to allow this overwhelm to debilitate me? Or can I

Control what I can do. This is I say this to myself all the time. Like, what can you do? What can you do? Like I needed to do a lot of cleaning around my house. And I like did not have the time to do it because I was like, I just need to reset. That was the answer. The answer for me was like, I need to do a quick reset. I’m not gonna de-clean my bathrooms. I’m not gonna mop. Like, I’m not gonna, I’m gonna worry about it. But can I pick up my kitchen table, which is like anyone else, like a landing zone for all any flat surface, right? So I actually recommend.

Starting with that physical space because it will make you feel immensely better about the mess, the situation, whatever word you want to use, if you can just get a little bit of pickup. Now, this all kind of also goes into play with how you’re feeling, right? And, you know, how much assistance you can get from other people. But I’m telling you the other night, I said, I’m gonna listen to my book for half an hour. And I’m like, I’m putting on my headphones and I told my kids, we’re gonna do a pickup.

And I gave them directions. So I said, right now we’re gonna just look. I want you guys to look room to room. We did like a little zone. And I said, if it belongs in your room, you’re going to put it to where it belongs in your room. And I was like, the end goal though, because I I don’t know about anyone else’s kids, is like they’ll just throw stuff in their rooms. I’m like, the end goal here is we need to vacuum the floor in your room. So you cannot just throw it. It has to go in a space. And listen, my son, he loves this. So he was like all about it. My daughter.

Cara Harvey (13:59.842)

basically took a bunch of stuff and threw it in her closet. Like it I’m gonna be real. Like yeah, that’s how it happened that they both clean a little bit differently. But I did tell her that the bowl was to vacuum. So it is what it is. So I said, we’re gonna start in we we call our rooms in our house by like the color of it’s in like family room or living room. I’m like go to the gray room and then go to the blue room. I don’t know why we do it. So I was like we’re gonna start in the gray room. I and I was like and I’m gonna pick up in here too. I said if it belongs to you and it is in your room, you’re gonna put it in your room.

And I said, by the time we’re done with this pickup, we’re gonna put timers on. If it is left in here, mommy gets to choose what happens to it. And mommy is most likely gonna take a trash bag. You clear. And they’re like, all right. So I was like, all right, let’s do it. So I put on quick timers, five, ten minutes. I’m not even like it was literally like five minutes for my kids. And I was like, I’m putting my headphones in because I needed something favorable. Otherwise, like I hate picking up and cleaning. So if I’m not listening to a book, like I’m not gonna do it. So I put my headphones in and it cause it motivates me to do more.

and we kind of went and took a spada. I I said that in my head I was gonna do a half hour. I think I did it for about 45 minutes. And my kids, they didn’t have as much stuff l everywhere as I thought in the beginning. I was like, this is gonna take forever. But as we started to do it, like they really didn’t have that much stuff out there. They were able to bring stuff to the room easily. And I was able to pick up. Now there’s still piles sitting there. My junk drawer is absolutely exploding. And I was like, went to put something in it and I was like, I really gotta clean this out. Like it was, it’s not a perfect system.

But what it did do was it gave me that outer order of calm. And I will tell you this too, with this physical space cleaning step. I also tend to always start with my dishes because there’s something about that full sink that feels heavy to me. So you know what your heavy space is. For me, it’s the sink because I’m like, it just starts to pile. It’s just too much. So while they were putting their stuff away, I was like, let me get these dishes loaded. And automatically took me six minutes to get the dishes loaded.

Right. I could take a breath because that pile, that visible pile, felt like it went down. And my brain was like, you’re able to control this. Right. I wasn’t able in the amount of time I had to reset every piece of my home, to reset every flat surface. There’s still stuff I want to work on today. There’s still laundry that has to be folded. But I was able to get a few things done that made me feel more in control. So when you’re trying to create momentum, start with the things that stand out to you the most.

Cara Harvey (16:26.21)

visibly the things that you’re like this if I have to keep looking at this, it’s putting me in a bad mood. It’s making me feel guilty about getting behind. It’s making me feel like I’m a failure, right? Like I can’t take care of my home because of the like it’s impacting my thoughts. So instead, let’s eliminate it. Okay. So one, that’s my first advice when everything feels like that and I’m like struggling to just get it. It’s like don’t underestimate the impact that even a 15 minute pickup

Can have on your mental health and making you feel better and getting momentum. It happens to me every time I do it. I’m like frustrated, stomping around, nobody helped. Like every single time. And then I’m like, let me just do a quick pickup. And I’m like, okay. Like it’s not as bad as I thought, right? It still, you know, needs some love, but it’s not as bad as I thought. And it lets me see progress fast. So I would say, make that the goal. I don’t feel great. Everything feels behind.

My first goal is I’m gonna spend one time a day doing a 15 minute reset and pickup. And whatever gets done in that 15 minutes, I’m gonna allow be enough and be good. And I’m gonna enroll, right? Like you were not your family’s personal assistance. So which is a line I actually just put in a slide that you will get in your morning and evening routine thing when I finish filming today. But enroll them depending on ages and abilities, right? Even small kids can put their laundry in a basket, you know, like those are all things they can do. So step one is.

I’m gonna start with 15 minutes. And then maybe you get that 15 minutes done and you’re having a day where you feel well. Then it’s maybe I’m gonna do 15 minutes multiple times a day. Right. Doesn’t have to be a huge chunk. And then maybe the next day you don’t feel well. Okay. So the question is can I do 15? And then if that’s even feels like too much, it’s like, can I just do five? Because I think again, our brain wants to overwhelm and like make a huge like a hyperbole, right? A hyperbole is when we like expand things, right? Like big as a

mountain or whatever, you know, like things are big, right? our brain does that with tasks. When tasks don’t have to take that long, this is one of the reasons why something like coworking is efficient, right? This is why using the timer is efficient. Because something that feels like it’s going to take forever might not take as long if we just get started in small chunks. So use that as kind of a barometer of how we feel. The other advice, I can’t remember which book it is from. I feel like it’s

Cara Harvey (18:48.78)

Is it how to clean house when drowning, maybe? But she talked about the concept of the spoons. And I think especially for my friends who unfortunately do struggle with chronic illnesses, the spoon metaphor is a really good one. But I can’t remember the author. I think it’s Casey Davis, maybe. And it’s how to keep house while drowning. If not, someone in that space said it. But you are allotted a hundred spoons a day or whatever your spoons are, right? And you have to decide how to use them. But every day when you wake up, you might have less spoons.

And you have to decide, like, hey, if this is a five spoon task versus a 15 spoon task, what energy do I have to give? I’m butchering that, but it’s part of acknowledging where you’re feeling. So I would also say back to proactive, reactive, what if you make a list of the things that over like your daily tasks? So we’re talking daily routines. Like my theme for this month is routine reset because I’m like, I all of our routines kind of like lightened up, went out the window. So

My goal today actually to get back on routines is like I picked my whole big chunk of like first half of the day routine, my nine to twelve, my personal things. And my goal today, what was it? I was like, I have one, two, three, four, five, six. I have six things that I would like to accomplish personally slash home daily outside of work. So my goal today was like, can I get half of them done? So I did. I got three of them done. So it’s like great.

So tomorrow my goal is to get four and then five and then six. So by the end of this week, I’ve reset that routine. Now here’s what I recommend you do: you go through the routines that you typically have, slash would like to have, and you kind of categorize them. Put your fold your paper into threes, right? depending on the amount of energy that each task takes. And then when you have that amount of energy that each task takes, you can stop and say to yourself, okay, I know that this is gonna take medium energy or

Five spoons, or I’m gonna stop the spoons because I feel like I’m saying around, but medium energy, right? I’ve got low, medium, high energy, which there are tons of lessons in the school of alignment on this specific thing. Your green, your yellow, your red tasks. So if you’ve not gotten a chance, I would definitely go into the school of alignment and watch those videos. But say, hey, this is a yellow task, this is a green task, these are my you know, red tasks, this is how much energy I need for the task. So when I I don’t have to pre-decide everything, right?

Cara Harvey (21:07.884)

Because if I wake up and I make this beautiful plan and then I don’t feel well, all I’m gonna leave the day with is guilt about not feeling well. So what if you pose yourself the question that I said I pose all the time? What can I do? So if I wake up and I do this sometimes like depending on the week of my cycle I’m in, I’m like, all right, this is the amount of energy I have to give, right? If I know that I can do some yellow energy tasks right now in the beginning of the day when my energy is highest, I might want to pick these ones.

When I’m at the end of the night and my energy is dipped really low, like I’m not come find somebody else to do it, right? Like it’s not me. So maybe I pick certain tasks that take less energy. If you can pre-categorize those tasks when you’re in the moment and you’re actually looking at the amount of energy you have, instead of having to make the decision and do it, you can reference a chart, be like, here’s my morning routine. Good, better, best, yellow, green, red. Like here’s the type of energy I have.

And maybe my kid didn’t sleep through the night and I woke up late and I’m thrown like whatever it is. And you can say, all right, what tasks can I get done? Instead of, well, I woke up late. I can’t do any of it. I might as well scroll my phone and you know keep it in snooze or whatever the situation is. So I want you to take from that what feels helpful for you when it comes to your specific situation and your specific life, because again.

Every single one of us is different. Our energy is different. What we’re dealing with is different. But know that things can be overwhelming. You can choose how overwhelmed you allow yourself to feel based on them. It’s not saying they’re not overwhelming. That’s how you feel, right? It’s a fact. I’m not discrediting that. Yes, it is overwhelming to get a lot of things done. It is overwhelming to feel behind. It is overwhelming to feel ill. All of those things are overwhelming. But then the choice that you have is.

How overwhelmed do I allow myself to feel? And going back to proactive reactive strategies, it’s like, all right, what can I do to prepare for this? And then what can I do in the moment? So hopefully, Jamie and anybody else who’s watching, hopefully that helped. So we only had those two questions today, which I just talked about for half an hour. So I guess that was enough questions to get started on. What I would like you to do is ask yourself a question. What am I gonna dive back into when it comes to OPY? One video a week.

Cara Harvey (23:27.118)

Am I gonna look at one of the summer curriculums? Maybe you didn’t get the chance to check out any of the stuff I put up. So when you log in, don’t forget, you’re gonna see the main course and then you’ll see secondary courses that say school of alignment, majors, minors, electives, school of momentum, school, et cetera. So you’ll have the on-purpose you, and then you should, and if you don’t let me know, have the majors, minors, and electives. Right now, at this moment of speaking, the each of them have at least one extra.

mini course inside of them. And then I’m gonna put the fall curriculum up. So thank you to everybody who voted, who put their opinions in. What’s really fun about this course is because it’s a growing membership, whoever’s in the program when I send the survey out for the next semester gets to decide what I make. And then I work on those three. So I’ve got three of them coming for you. And by the end of this week, I’m hoping today, but we’ll see. But the goal is by the end of this week, you will get the elective from the school of alignment that is morning and evening routines to help you craft out beautiful morning and evening routines. So

Have a wonderful rest of your day, friends.